


The Divine Sword

by Ione



Category: X/1999
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-29
Updated: 2009-12-29
Packaged: 2017-10-05 10:51:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/40986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ione/pseuds/Ione
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Subaru and Fuuma meet . . .</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Divine Sword

The silhouette emerging from the wind-drifts of white olive blossoms is, for just that moment, a silvery blur, a kami irrupting from the outer world.

Eyeblink.

Kami—Kamui. The wind subsides, and Subaru sees Fuuma.

Still tall, still strong, his gaze keen and reflective. His smile pensive, but shadowed at the corners, an expression never characteristic until he explored his new powers, and desires, at the side of the expert in power, desire—and pain--Sakura-Zukamori.

The former Sakura-Zukamori, Seishiro Sakurazuka.

Fuuma lifts a hand, indicating the promontory just above, and Subaru's inward eye depicts Fuuma walking down the mossy steps past the shrines tended by generations of monks' patient hands, the gravestones framed by ancient, gnarled trees. "I like this place," Fuuma says, as if surprised.

"It's quiet."

The moment Subaru speaks, bells toll, echoes reverberating from the sheer granite walls of Mt. Toya. Just audible over the sound of the waterfall below rises the slow, peaceful chant of the monks gathered in the long buildings hidden by the trees.

Fuuma looks back over his shoulder, the wind fingering through his hair. It is difficult to see his eyes, but that smile, the Sei smile, is still there. "Do they know who you are?"

Subaru returns the smile. "The Star-Gazer probably does. When I arrived he showed me Sorata's memorial." He lifts his chin toward the promontory, and Fuuma turns, the wind flagging his long white coat.

"Sorata," he says. His profile is still, outlined against the distant granite cliff.

Memory? Regret? Subaru gives in to impulse. "I have seen Arashi, just once."

And Fuuma nods. "She came to see you."

"You still know where everyone is." Of course he did, or he would not be here.

Fuuma nods again. "I still know where everyone is. But not what they are doing. Nor what they are thinking. Why did Arashi come to see you?"

"To tell me that she carried Sorata's child."

Fuuma turns again, and the wind streams through the white coat, rippling the shirt he wears beneath, the long black trousers. "'Live for us both.'"

Subaru smiles, remembering the loud, brash monk with the Osaka accent. He'd seemed a fool, but he was the one who finally got Kamui to eat. To laugh again, just for a time. To look outward, after Subaru brought him back from the inner world.

Kamui. He looks up at Fuuma, whose face twists, and that expression smites Subaru with memory: _Kamui nailed to the post, the sword through his hand; Fuuma leans close, closer, smiling. Licks the blood off his neck: surprise! Pain. Pleasure._

And the memory is gone, leaving Subaru gazing straight into Fuuma's dark eyes, viscerally aware that Fuuma is reliving the same memory—

\--and that the pleasure is long gone, leaving only the pain.

Fuuma is first to break the silence. "Why are you here?"

For a moment Subaru cannot break that gaze, and he sees the old Kamui, Dragon of Earth, whose will subsumed all others' wills through the weakness of their heart's desire. But Subaru's heart's desire is also long gone, leaving only the emptiness of this quiet life among the gravestones, and memory.

_Sei_. Subaru finds that he can break that gaze after all, that Fuuma's will is not a divine sword, slashing through spirit and flesh. He says, "I am here because I am the Sakura-Zakumori."

Fuuma shifts his scrutiny from Subaru's cool gaze--one eye dark, the other pale and sightless--down his slim, straight form, to the long, strong hands resting there on his knees. Subaru sits there so still and tense on the ancient stone bench, and Fuuma remembers watching from the shadows of the Rainbow Bridge the swift, lightning strike of those hands. He says again, "Do the monks know who you are?"

And Subaru says again, "The Star-Gazer probably does." He looks away, over the river valley, into which the waterfall rumbles deep below. "But he welcomed me anyway." Then he looks up, and smiles, and it's Seishiro's ironic smile, bitter and self-aware. "He probably knows that I kill only where I love."

"And so you sit here on the mountainside and watch the sun chase the stars."

Subaru shrugs. "There is peace here."

"And no love."

Subaru does not speak, only turns one hand outward, then drops it again to his knee.

Fumma laughs, the sound whipped away by the wind. "Your desire to protect the world is commendable."

Subaru shrugs again. He looks up, discovering that after all he is capable of question. "Why are you here?"

Fuuma shifts, his boots crunching the wind-swept gravel. He leans against a rock, arms crossed, the waterfall thundering just beyond; Subaru smells not just the olive blossoms, the ancient pine, but a whiff of clean male scent. "Because the weight of the world has dwindled to the weight of memory. Because once fate imposed meaning on my life, to the exclusion of all else. But sacrifice banished it, leaving the world free to choose its own fate. Leaving me free to find meaning, if meaning exists." He smiles Sei's smile.

"You come to a Sakura-Zukamori for meaning."

Fuuma retorts, still smiling, "Am I not a Sakura-Zukamori myself? The first person I killed was one I loved. And the last. I am not here to seek meaning. I am here for the risk." And opens his hands.

His bare hands, as risk is no longer the cold blue of steel. No, that way is easy.

Subaru rises from the stone bench where he has been spinning out his days, and when Fuuma strikes, it's fast. Subaru blocks, whirls, grips Fuuma's shirt, and they slam against the granite wall, laughing. Their hair mingles, blinding them as Fuuma's sharp teeth find Subaru's ear, the side of his neck, and then his mouth. Seared by lightning, they come together, fast and hard as a knife--.

\--and then the pain is gone, leaving only the pleasure.


End file.
